Journals of the Wicked
by kimchiwon
Summary: There once was a boy predestined to be a mad wizard. His name was Tom Riddle. But the play of a Norse god's mischief twists his fate into something far grander; he lives a lie till it becomes truth, and acquires otherworldly companions along the way. Dark AU, time travel, slash, HPTMR, Grindelwald, Dumbledore, different Harry, different world.


Edited: May 25, 2013

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Disclaimer: Harry Potter is not mine. © J K Rowling

Warning(s): OOC thoughts on young Tom's part, since he's still a child and we can't really have him so cold at the start, can we?

Notes: This fic's plot has just gotten a major overhaul (or revision), because frankly I can't really remember where I was going with it, or even if it was headed somewhere. I've finally decided that this will all be **about Tom Riddle**; a story of his life, and however I play with it. There would be a lot of elements, and maybe even **some trigger material**, I'm not too sure at this stage. I will be making it up as I go along, and I just hope you'll enjoy it (because I'm planning to spend my sleeping hours to get a large portion out before I forget, once again, or I simply lose inspiration). **Slash** between Tom and Harry will be a long way yet. I can't guarantee that historical events will be completely accurate, but I will try my best and do my research. I'll attempt to cross-post over AO3, too. Thank you for your patience.

I hope you all enjoy.

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**Journals of the Wicked**

**The Blank Canvas**

⁂

He looked around the dark room. There was nothing to see, but dusty old tomes stacked on a table to his right, completely undisturbed. He walked over and picked up the topmost book, long, spindly fingers turning the unexpectedly white, crisp pages. The pages were blank, free from any text or photos. He dropped it carelessly and picked another one. And another one. And another... All the thick tomes were blank. He accidentally hit a red tome hard as he dropped his hand, displacing dust. The man coughed, scowling slightly as he waved a hand before his face and overturned the tome. His scowl lessened as he noticed a thin, black book hiding beneath the large tome. He picked it up and wiped off the layer of thick dust smudged across. His eyes squinted at the gold letters seemly imprinted on the leather of the cover.

_Tom Marvolo Gaunt Riddle, Jr._

Curiosity piqued, he opened the book. He eyed the words written in forest green ink across the foremost page. _The Orphanage_, it read. He turned the page and was greeted by a monochrome photo of a building. "Wool's Orphanage," the man muttered. He glanced below the picture, seeing the location of the orphanage. He tuned another page.

A small boy no older than three stared back at him, blinking desolately straight ahead. It looked like a photo taken for documentation, not unlike the mugshots of criminals newly jailed. The photo was printed black and white once again, so he could not distinguish the colour of the child's eyes nor the colour of his skin. He can distinguish, however, the boy's refined features. His eyes, for it was the most striking feature of the boy, even without colour, were surrounded by thick dark lashes. No doubt that if he _could_ see the colour, he would be entranced, and it won't be only by their beauty. His gaze was sharp, unfit for a small body such as his. The boy's nose was straight and small, fitting his oval face perfectly. His lips were pulled in a tight line, his jaw set taut. The boy's hair fell softly in luscious waves.

The man's eyes looked on as the boy slowly sneered, showing a hint of teeth and curving his bow-shaped lips. The boy looked away, apparently snubbing the one with the camera. He walked off and out of the frame.

The man blinked before pursing his lips, watching the four-second reel a few times before turning another page. _BIODATA_ was written on top of the page in bold, black letters. His eyes roamed across the information on the page. He was slightly surprised to see that the boy's age was five, instead of the three years he looked like. The page displayed the boy's name, age, birth date, location, his parents…

His mother was Merope Gaunt. _Gaunt_… Although the man's roots were far from British wizarding blood, he knew the name and of the family's notoriety. The Gaunts were known for interbreeding—as were the Blacks, but the Blacks were considerably more open to infusing new blood through their political marriages—and their intended isolation from the rest of the world. The man wondered how the boy got his features, considering interbreeding showed results of mutation and handicapped characteristics, and also magical core deterioration.

Tom Riddle, Sr. The boy's father was a muggle, because the man could not recall any magical line with Riddle as a family name. '_The child must have taken after his muggle father_, then.' The man sneered at the thought.

But even with their flaws, the Gaunts were still purebloods, and were said to be descendants of the great Salazar Slytherin. The ability to talk with snakes was amazing, and he wondered if the boy had inherited the trait.

He noted the list stating the boy's peculiar habits. Torturing small animals? Dousing other boys in cold water? Nitpicking and hiding small trinkets? It was unusual for a boy his age, considering what most his peers would be thinking about are toys and playing. Only accidental bursts of magic were the norm for wizarding children, too. It was impossible to have such control of his magic at a young age, even if he would prove to be powerful. Was the boy even a wizard? The man narrowed his eyes.

Maybe the bland photo of the orphanage hid more than what was thought? The man internally shrugged, figuring he would find out one way or another, considering most of his visions were usually not something he could just throw away with indifference. Another would always follow if the initial one was unclear. His persistent magic pushes him to find every little detail through more of his dreams, or through real-day events.

The pages depicted more of the boy's experiences in the orphanage in daily accounts, as if the thin book was a diary. It even contained some of the boy's thoughts, which were interesting in and of themselves. Worthy of note was their dark nature. It may be some kind of obtrusive sign for the man that he may have some connection to the child. A _child_. What was he to do with a child? He had no time for a measly little _boy_.

It was neither here nor there to think about though, for the edges of his vision started to black out, signalling the nearing end of his vision.

He quickly turned the page, reading the account of _Tom_ on a certain September night, and found it had nothing following it except an incomplete account. The words were barely there. His eyes jumped over to the date again. _Ah_. It was the fourteenth of September. When he went into his meditative state, it was nine in the morning of September 14.

Speaking of meditative state, his physical body felt a presence outside his quarters, and then he opened his eyes.

He tucked away his thoughts about his vision for another time. Too much to think about, and what was he to do anyway with what he'd seen?

"Enter," he smoothly ordered, before the butler outside could even knock. The butler silently opened the door, bowing deeply to the regal man seated on the floor.

"Milord, monsieur Willard von Bieléfield is here with his circle. May I inquire as to what to do with our guests? Shall I tell them that master is not available for the time being? Or shall I—"

"Do not bother, Roman. Welcome our... _guests_. I shall come down shortly," the man interrupted curtly, his back still to the door. Roman bowed deeply again, uttering a respectful _'Yes, master'_ and closing the door behind him. The man stood up and dusted off his robes. He walked towards an ornate full-body mirror, admiring himself.

He looked the perfect aristocrat. His robes were tailored to fit his physique and features, and it did fantastically. As he stared at his honey-glazed hazel eyes, he wondered idly how he was to charm the inept yet socially powerful wizards waiting for him down in his manor's parlour. Shall he croon of sweet promises and display his wealth? Or entice with sharp, witty words that show of an articulate, intelligent and dangerous man beneath his well-known masculine beauty? Ah, circumstance will tell.

He threw a smirk at himself before striding out of his quarters.

He saw them from the top of the staircase, sneering at their pitiful display of the 'perfect pureblood mask', boasting about something or another. They were dirt under the bottom of his shoe, but alas, he needs to endure their disgusting presence.

"Gellert!" a bald man roughly cried, throwing his way a yellowish grin. Grindelwald inwardly cringed, but on his face his thin lips curled into a pleasing smile. He walked down the stairs, barely listening to the chatter of the fools.

For the greater good.

⁂

A gust of wind hit against the creaky window. The sun was warm, but cool winds breeze by the courtyard. It was the perfect time for playing. Almost all the kids were outside, squealing their little lungs out as they ran and played around the backyard of Wool's Orphanage. Giggles floated in the open window of a room, where a small boy was watching with blank, cold eyes

His face was stoic, only his eyes occasionally moving as they blinked. Small, pale hands clutched the wood of the windowsill. He was standing on a brown worn chest just to reach the window.

Tom's lips tugged downward as he stared at an annoyingly loud girl, who was crying as she tripped and fell down. His eyes remained cold and void yet the irritation inside him arose. The boys around her were laughing, childishly taunting her. The girl cried more and more, the volume of her shrill voice getting louder and louder by the second. Tom's eyebrow twitched, his lips twisted into an unsightly sneer, yet his eyes remained the same. He moved his eyes towards a brown-haired boy's tatty clothes. He stared at the dirty end of the boy's shirt, chanting inside his head, '_burnburnburnburn_' like a mantra. A small flame lit at the end of the shirt, and the boy beside the brunet screamed in pain and fear as his skin burned from sticking too close to the other. One by one, the boys' clothes were on fire, and only with the nearest matrons' help did the crying boys survive with only a few burns on their sides.

Accusing eyes of an old matron glared at his window, seemingly unsurprised he was there. Tom only blinked back at her, his face cleared of any expression. He turned away from the window and jumped down the chest. The small boy unconsciously bit his lip, undecided on what to do. He opt to sleep now before any of the keepers of the orphanage issued his 'deserved punishment' for doing his 'demonic acts' once again. Tom sighed. He scrambled up onto his rickety bed, the thin mattress not doing anything to comfort his back from the steel frame of the bed.

As Tom stared up at the ceiling of his room—for it is his room by virtue of Mrs. Cole isolating him from the rest of the kids, to avoid 'untoward incidents'—he wondered once again why he was here. Why him, and not any other child out there? Why was he an orphan? Did his parents dislike him? Or did they throw him away because of his _freakiness_? He wondered why he was given punishments, yet when others bully him, they weren't?

He raised up his hand, the other cushioning his head. Small, pale fingers twirled, and he wondered. He wondered how he can make things move to his will without touching them. He wondered how he can make others feel pain without doing anything to them. He wondered why he can speak to snakes, when apparently no one is able to do that.

Young Tom was confused. He wasn't exactly cruel. He wasn't kind, either. He just exists. He looks on with blank eyes, pondering on a lot of questions with no answers. He cannot comprehend why others wouldn't like him. He could not understand why he finds it hard to like them. He does not grasp the idea of having _powers_ when everyone around him refused him for that very same reason. Is it _because_ of his situation that he was given powers? To survive? But...

He would rather live than just survive. Maybe that's what his special powers want him to do. Go out of his way and _do something_. Anything. Everything. He can do it.

'_Can you, really?_' a cruelly amused voice whispered in his mind. Tom clenched his hand into a fist, staring at it with hard determination. '_Yes, I can do it! I can,_' Tom thought resolutely.

Because he was special.

⁂

Another year had passed. It was the first of September, signalling the time for the boys his age to start learning. Granted, he knew he should have been in pre-school when he was only but three-years-old, but he _is_ in an orphanage, however, so he could not exactly choose to be picky. It was still thrilling. The thought of school and getting away from the bleak walls of the orphanage for even half the day was most certainly preferred. Tom was excited; it could prove to be interesting, and he wants to learn and read and write.

He had already memorized the alphabet and learnt every letter's sound. He knows how to count, and to differentiate shapes from one another. He knows how to spell a few words correctly, and it wouldn't be long then that he would be able to spell every word properly. He knows the colours of the rainbow, and knows when to say it's morning, or noon or even twilight. He already knows a lot for a boy who was living in an orphanage his entire life, and certainly more than his bull-headed peers.

They were to study in the pre-school just past the corner of the street the orphanage was at. Tom does not know what they will teach them; is it addition, or even multiplication, as he saw in the frayed pages of a book an orphan left behind? Or how the leaves become crisp and warmly coloured when it is autumn? Tom does not know, but he hopes that the pre-school has a lot to offer.

"Boys and girls! Line up in the lobby. We're going to school today," a young matron cheerfully called. Tom perked up, combed his fingers through his dark brown hair, grabbed a sack with a broken pencil and a scrap of paper inside, scrambled down his bed and opened the door to his room. He refrained from running to the lobby. It wouldn't be good to let them know he was _too_ eager about the prospect of school. They might steal the school from him.

When he was nearing the quite long line of the other orphans, his way was blocked by the fat matron who glared at him when the boys' clothes went aflame.

"Where do you think you are going, runt?" the fat woman growled, glaring at him with her squinty eyes. Tom blinked blankly back at her, unsure if he even wanted to answer the matron. "To school, ma'am," he reluctantly uttered. Even if the matrons treated him badly, he made sure to address them properly so they can't find fault of disrespect in him.

"To school?" the woman repeated incredulously back at him. Then, she laughed. Loud and boisterous and cruel. Her barking laugh slowly reverted to small chuckles, before she sneered spitefully at him. "You are not going to school!" she scoffed, "Heaven knows you'll just learn and do something—I don't know what but something _freaky_—even more dangerous than what you've already done!"

The children behind her just giggled and laughed at him, taunting him with words like _freak_, or _demon_, or _runt_, repeating the matron's words back at him. Mocking him. Tom's eyebrow twitched, and his lips scowled. Then, he glared. The matron stopped laughing and grew hesitant when she saw his glare. She unconsciously took a step back, a shiver crawling up her spine. The boy never glared. He just frowned, and it was only a scant few times that he did. His eyes were almost always empty and haunting.

Now, his eyes, from the normal cerulean blue it shined, were slowly darkening into a pitiless black. Hate was oozing out from him, and every hair on her skin stood up. She shakily took another step back. The frightening boy stepped forward. Suddenly, it felt as if the temperature of the room had _dropped_ literally. She can't look away. A shudder ripped her fat body, and she hastily scrambled to the front of the line of the kids, tearing her eyes from the gaze of the boy she left behind.

Even with all the loathing it showed, she dare say it was almost... _soulless_.

⁂

After that event, Tom went and burnt all of the fat lady's clothes, and hid most of the toys of the kids she brought with her. As his punishment, after paddling his knees until it went black and blue, and his body giving up on him as he knelt on scattered rock salt with a heavy tome placed on each of his held up arms, Tom was to stay locked inside his room. He was allowed no meals for the rest of the day.

It was alright though. It was not the punishments that made another stab to his sense of dignity and integrity. Tom was used to these kinds of punishments. It was the fact that they were knowingly depriving him of the only thing that may make him genuinely happy, the only thing that he can call _his_, for he can honestly earn it. Knowledge. He wants to learn what is outside the four stone walls of his prison, if ever there is a world that can welcome him graciously out there. He wants to go to school and learn because with knowledge, even if he was lacking in wealth, no one can stomp on him for being utterly _ignorant_. He wants to keep up and even exceed. He wants to be competent.

When he made an oath to himself that one September day, he knew he could and he _would_ accomplish his dream. But how was he to do so if he has no means to be more than who he is now?

Tom angrily kicked the brown chest under his small window. He stared at it for a few moments, fuming silently, before he gave an indignant huff and carried himself up. He wearily watched the people outside go about their daily lives. His eyes idly followed a beggar whose slumped shoulders showed his failure to obtain, once again, any scrap of bread from the stingy matrons of the orphanage.

As Tom continued to stare at the beggar until he was out of sight, an idea bloomed in the boy's mind. He moved his eyes towards the gate of the walls surrounding the orphanage, and thought that maybe, just maybe, he can climb up the gate and jump down on the pavement. The gate was not that high, after all, and he can certainly take that risk if it meant he can escape the hell this place represented.

_'What is the risk again?'_ Tom absently questioned himself. Ah, right. Death. Or a mild incapacitation. Or just a few, simple bruises and a broken knee.

_'Er... no,'_ Tom cringed, wondering why he would jump himself to his death. His dainty fingers drummed incessantly on the windowsill, his mind floating with scattered thoughts.

_'Or... nah,_' Tom thought offhandedly, dismissing the idea before he can even ponder on it seriously. Even if he was to be adopted, Tom can't make sure that he would be placed in a nice family with a nice home. He had seen those who were returned to the orphanage after the experimental week in the process of adoption. _Failures_, the matrons called them. Some were sent back because the adopters disliked the child. The other orphans returned, traumatized with an even crueller faith than in the orphanage. They were abused, Tom noted, and a fear of being adopted was instilled in them. _'Even if the blundering idiots were victims of nasty households, though, most still keep on trusting in strangers to keep them nice and safe.'_ Tom sneered.

And even if he was placed in a nice family with a nice home, Tom wasn't sure if he would like a goody straight-cut family. He couldn't forever keep up the pretence of being a decent, polite orphan boy. And surely, his natural tendency to be spiteful and harsh did not fit any normal couple's checklist of a good child. He was often thought to be a doll—Tom hated that term—beautiful yet unmoving and _empty_.

He couldn't keep on thinking these thoughts, though. It's not like he wants to be restricted in a family just young with recent marriage or a family of an old couple. He doesn't want to have strings to tie him down whenever he wants to achieve his ambitions.

He wouldn't be adopted anyway. With all of what the matrons and Mrs. Cole say about him whenever there was a potential adopter present, Tom was quite sure he wouldn't be a candidate to be the 'lucky child' of the couple. What they say was certainly not pleasant, if the suspicious and cautious looks of the adopters sent his way were any indication.

He clenches his eyes shut, hiding sapphire blues beneath thin eyelids, and opens them a moment later. Escape it is, then.

Tom eyes the steel gate warily.


End file.
